Interview with Jan van Wijk

Q: What is the secret of DFsee success?
Versions for all platforms or technical support?

I think it is mainly the good support, and the fact that it has stayed around
for so long, being improved every year, to keep up with changing technology.

Q: Can you compare DFSee with other famous disk tools?

Not really, while there are many tools that do certain things better than DFSee,
there is none that I know of that covers such a broad spectrum of functionality.

What utility is similar to DFSee by functionality?

For partitioning, perhaps GPARTED on Linux, and for things like cloning/imaging
there are various utilities like the old Ghost and such ...

Q: You have a library for development textmode apps.
Are you going create GUI for DFSee?

I am not sure yet, I have been playing with the idea to create a Qt varsion
of DFSee for years, but that is a lot of work, and it does NOT add any
functionality, apart from a more pleasant and easier to use interface.

Q: What new technologies Microsoft can introduce in this year?

Related to DFSee, perhaps there 'new' version of NTFS that has been in development
for several years. But in reality that is more of a (database) layer ON-TOP of the existing
NTFS filesystem, rather than something really new.

Also, Apple is also introducing a new filesystem this year (APFS) to replace the aging HFS+
filesystems used in almost all Apple products.

What new barriers for OS/2 users.

I don't think there will be be any really new barriers related to DFSee, but a few existing ones
like support for disks over 2TB and GPT partitioning will become more important.

DFSee already supports GPT, and will support disks over 2TB with the next release.
(but unfortunately, the OS/2 version can't handle thos large disks)

Q: What functions does ArcaOS use from DFSEE?

Disk consistency checking, and some fixes to partitioning and LVM information,
as well as resizing existing (NTFS/FAT32) partitions to make room.

The actual partitioning is still being done using LVM deratives.

Q: Do you know, are there plans to suppot
GPT structure of harddrive in OS/2?

Plans yes, solutions - not yet ...

The problem is mainly with GPT implying usage of disks over 2TB, which will need
rather creative solutions on the OS/2 side, which may not be easy to integrate
with exisiting GPT usage (by other operating systems)

It may be possible to use a (less than 2TB) part of a really huge disk for OS/2,
but sharing, or using partitions larger than 2TB will be impossible,
or very hard to manage (for the average user)

Q: Do you see a reason to create new file system for OS/2?

No not really, not for OS/2 usage anyway.

More interoperability would be nice, for example for ExFAT, that will be used
more and more for large external devices like SD-cards and USB sticks.

What file system is missing?

ExFAT, but there are severe licensing issues with that ...

Having support for EXT4 would also be nice, for people using Linux,
but that is a huge undertaking, and there is already JFS that could
be used to share data between Linux and OS/2.

Q: Please remind to users, what are the system requirements of modern OS/2
to the disk?

Not sure what you mean here, the main thing is, it should be smaller than 2TB.
(and for easy usage, 500GB or less when possible)

Q: Disks with AF format (Advanced format), Is it compatible with OS/2?

Advanced Format is not a very exact terminology, if you mean using 4 KiB sectorsizes,
that is NOT natively supported by OS/2, but almost all disks that support it, also offer
512 byte sectorsize emulation (512E).

Q: HDD with reallocated sectors, is it safe to use it? 2 sectors, 10, 50?

The number of relocated sectors is not the reall determinator here, the amount available
varies wildly between disks. It is more the CHANGE in the amount of reallocated sectors
that might be worrieng.

If there are some (relocated) bad-sectors, but that count is stable, it means there may have
been some surface problem, which was worked around by using spare sectors.

However, if the count of reallocated sectros slowly rises over time, it means there
are peristent problems inside the disks (perhaps enclosed dust particles) and
the disk may fail completely at any moment ...